Fibre-Metal Laminates (FMLs) are hybrid materials that are currently being investigated in Canada for applications in primary aircraft structures. As part of a larger ongoing collaborative project between the National Research Council---Institute for Aerospace Research---Structures Materials Propulsion Laboratory (NRC-IAR-SMPL), Bombardier Aerospace and Carleton University, this investigation studied the diagonal tension behaviour in curved webs made from an FML termed GLARE (GLAss Reinforced aluminum). For this study, a stiffened cylindrical specimen was designed (IAR cylinder) using the methodology developed by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) for aluminum alloys. Varying thickness of GLARE 3, GLARE 4, and 2024-T3 aluminum were used for the cylinder web. An added objective was to determine if the NACA-based diagonal tension analysis method can accurately predict the stresses and failures of an orthotropic material in a curved web system.; This thesis summarizes the diagonal tension theory, design of the test specimen, development of the numerical simulation methodology, its calibration using experimental results from NACA, and its application to the FML specimens.; The numerical simulation using the code, LS-DYNA, showed very good agreement with NACA experiment. As a result the same modeling procedure was used to model and provide predictions for the IAR cylinder. The predictions will be compared to experimental test results that will be obtained by NRC later this year.
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